Surface acoustic wave slanted array correlator (SAW-SAC) devices are ideal choices for implementing wideband compressive receivers for electronic intelligence (ELINT) and electronic support measure (ESM) applications because the SAW-SAC wide bandwidth capability allows the instantaneous sampling of signals over a wide frequency range of several hundred megahertz. These devices can be designed to minimize both frequency domain fresnel ripples (which affect time-domain sidelobes) and the effect of interelectrode reflections. The receiver system's signal sorting performance degrades relative to the design ideal as the amplitude and phase errors in the SAW-SAC device degrade. The residual phase and amplitude errors resulting from fabrication tolerances and design inaccuracies cause the degradation in the time sidelobe performance of the compressed pulse.
Phase compensation in SAW-SAC devices may be achieved by placing a metallized stripe between the input and output transducers. This concept is described in "Phase Compensation of Linear FM Slanted Transducers By Use Of Metallized Stripes" by T.B. Cooper et al. This method has provided a phase error peak reduction of up to 90% resulting in a corresponding reduction in the compressed pulse time-sidelobes. With lower sidelobe levels, better close-in instantaneous dynamic range can be achieved in EW receivers. Although effective methods have been developed for phase compensation for SAW-SAC devices, further reduction of time sidelobes would occur if amplitude errors were minimized independently from phase errors.